Despite some progress on improving security in Central Africa, the
continuing smuggling of weapons and the movement of refugees and
internally displaced persons continue to threaten the integrity of
countries across the region. Less noted, but no less important, is the
role that wildlife poaching plays in this perilous circumstance.

Driven by growing demand from China and Asia, the illegal trade in
ivory, rhino horn, tiger bone and other endangered species is
skyrocketing. In Asia, seizures of tiger parts have quadrupled over the
past decade - a figure that reflects increasing trade as much or more
than it does improved law enforcement. Richard Carroll, vice president
of Africa programs at World Wildlife Federation in the United States (WWF-US) notes "last year was the worst year for rhino poaching in more than a quarter of a century. And this year looks like it may shatter that dismal record."

With an estimated global value of at least $8 billion annually, the
trade in endangered species has long been linked to organized,
transnational crime. However, as demand escalates and prices rise, the
poaching that supplies the trade has become militarized in ways that
pose a serious security threat to weak governments, particularly in
Central Africa. This was dramatically illustrated earlier this year when
one hundred Sudanese raiders stormed across the border from neighboring
Chad and methodically slaughtered as many as three hundred elephants
for their ivory in Cameroon's Bouda N'Djida national park. The Sudanese
raiders were believed to be Janjaweed militiamen who, armed with
automatic weapons and grenade launchers, were more than a match for
unarmed park guards.

Increasingly, militias, insurgents and even terrorist groups are
using the easy money from wildlife crime to buy arms and fund
insurgencies that claim lives,
hurt economies, and sow instability in states that lack the military
capacity to respond. According to a CRS report to Congress in 2008,
elephant and rhino poachers in Somalia have been indirectly linked to
terrorism through a local warlord who is believed to have given
sanctuary to the al-Qaeda operatives responsible for the bombing of a
Kenya hotel in 2002 and an earlier attack on the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi
in 1998.

Richard Carroll cogently points out that "poaching is not just a
conservation crisis any more. Long linked to drugs and arms smuggling
around the world, it now also now poses a growing threat to the
stability of governments in Africa--one that requires a both regional and international response."

This article originally appeared at CFR.org, an Atlantic partner site.